in mind that the principal source of Dowell’s information is the awe-struck Nancy. ‘[C]hant[ing] Edward’s praises to [Dowell]’, Nancy glorifies her guardian to such a degree that he becomes, as Dowell sees it, a superhuman combination of Lohengrin, El Cid and the Chevalier Bayard, three heroes of legendary status. Nancy’s transfiguration of Ashburnham from an exemplary soldier into an unexampled warrior is all the more noticeable because our only knowledge of his military service which does not appear to originate with her is the fact that he received the DSO and was promoted to the rank of brevet-major ‘during the shuffling of troops’ that happened as a result of the South African, or second Boer, War (1899–1902). To hold the Distinguished Service Order (awarded to officers for exceptional service) and be twice recommended for the Victoria Cross and yet remain at the rank of captain seems meagre reward for Ashburnham’s outstanding gallantry and a soldiering career which must have lasted around fifteen years. When Dowell asks Ashburnham about his DSO, he dismisses the question with either an embarrassed or a cynical disclaimer. Has Ashburnham embroidered the truth in order to entertain himself at the expense of Nancy or to impress Dowell? Or has Nancy, or Dowell, made most of it up, inventing a heroic record of service in tribute to the hero they worship? It is impossible to say, of course, but the more closely we examine the matter, the less certain we can be that Ashburnham was a good soldier – and that is without taking into consideration his affairs with Mrs Basil and Mrs Maidan, the wives of ‘injured brother officer[s]’. And what applies to Ashburnham’s soldiering is applicable to the novel as a whole: the more intensively it is scrutinized, the more densely uncertainties proliferate. For this reason, it is crucial that the reader stays alert and open-minded at all times. If we too readily accept Dowell’s characterization of Florence as a flirtatious ‘Anglo-maniac’ hell-bent on charming her way into the Hampshire rural gentry, for example, it will come as quite a shock to learn that she is ‘of a line that had actually owned Bramshaw Teleragh for two centuries before the Ashburnhams came there’.
Nor would it be wise to dismiss Dowell as a booby too hastily. There are other ways of approaching his narrative which suggest he may be more ringmaster than clown. First and foremost, Dowell’s narrative method, for all its apparent flaws, is closely modelled on Ford’s own theory of story-telling. ‘I have, I am aware,’ Dowell admits at the beginning of Part Four,
told this story in a very rambling way so that it may be difficult for anyone to find their path through what may be a sort of maze. I cannot help it. I have stuck to my idea of being in a country cottage with a silent listener, hearing between the gusts of the wind and amidst the noises of the distant sea, the story as it comes. And, when one discusses an affair – a long, sad affair – one goes back, one goes forward. One remembers points that one has forgotten and one explains them all the more minutely since one recognizes that one has forgotten to mention them in their proper places and that one may have given, by omitting them, a false impression. I console myself with thinking that this is a real story and that, after all, real stories are probably told best in the way a person telling a story would tell them. They will then seem most real.
By the time Ford wrote The Good Soldier, he had come to exactly the same conclusion about the anti-realistic effect of a strictly chronological narrative structure. Indeed, in Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance, Ford recalls how he and Conrad had decided that the whole problem of the British novel
was that it went straight forward, whereas in your gradual making acquaintance with your fellows you never do go straight forward. You meet an English gentleman at your golf club. He is beefy, full of health, the moral of the boy from an English Public School of the finest type. You discover, gradually, that he is hopelessly